About PearPie

What PearPie is

PearPie is an app for chatting with AI without giving up your data. It runs on your computer and your iPhone, and the conversations you have stay on those devices, not on a PearPie server. Your identity is just a key generated on your machine, not a customer record in our database.

If you're curious how the privacy actually works under the hood, the how it works page walks through it. This page is about the why.

Why I started PearPie

My name is Bram Slangen. After a master's in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam, I went to work in the blockchain world, building on peer-to-peer systems, but I never stopped following AI.

I used these tools a lot myself, and the more I used them, the more I wondered about all the data I was leaving behind in those chats. And many people around me couldn't even get that far: friends in law and medicine, whose work is too sensitive to paste into a logged chat box. It seemed strange to me that there was no easy, safe way for them to use AI at all.

That's why I founded PearPie. Using a service shouldn't come with a pile of unwanted costs, and your data shouldn't be the price. I wanted AI anyone can use without worrying about where their data ends up. Not because a policy says so, or because you found the right toggle, but because of how it's built. Your data should be yours. Always.

Built to be simple

The other half of the principle is accessibility. Privacy and ease aren't supposed to be a trade-off. Most privacy-respecting AI today still expects you to be a tinkerer: set up a server, run a command, read a wiki. PearPie doesn't. You install an app, open it, pick a model, talk. The privacy lives in the architecture; the experience is the kind anyone can use.

If something can be private and easy at the same time, both should be the default.

Who it's for

That principle attracts two kinds of users. The product is built for both.

It's a pilot. That's the deal.

PearPie is in its pilot launch. The core experience is there: running models locally, syncing between your devices, accessing premium models on the PearPie Network. But rough edges still exist, some platforms aren't released yet, and the app will keep changing fast. The privacy promises hold from day one, regardless of how early it is.

Where it's headed

Today PearPie can do three things: run open-source models on your own device, let your devices share work directly over peer-to-peer connections, and route requests to premium models on the PearPie Network. Those are top-tier models hosted on European infrastructure. The first two are entirely under your control. The third still relies on cloud providers, even if it's all in Europe and PearPie holds data processing agreements with each of them.

Closing that gap is the long-term direction: more models running locally, a wider peer-to-peer network of trusted devices, and eventually self-hosted European GPU infrastructure for the premium path. The privacy promises above already hold today and will continue to hold; what changes over time is how much of the underlying hardware PearPie controls directly.